Category | December

Board real estate is critical in portable equipment The proliferation of portable devices within the connected-consumer age places ever-increasing demands on both efficient power management as well as battery protection that guarantees safety through the life-time of the product. By Ashfaq Afzal, Product Marketing Manager, NXP Semiconductors and Des Beckford, Senior Applications [...]

Heavy Transportation The hybrid electric car is today a familiar concept, and can already be seen on Europe’s roads. There are clear benefits of having an electric motor working with an internal combustion engine, with an energy storage device allowing start-stop operation and the reuse of energy absorbed when braking. Fuel consumption [...]

Current mode operation ensures balanced current sharing Multiple power sources are often used by high power applications for load sharing (for high power) or redundancy (for high availability). By Goran Perica, Linear Technology A diode-OR circuit, as shown in Figure 1, is often the accepted solution to combining the inputs to [...]

Dynamic progress A change in technology is taking place in power factor correction. Static PFC systems are being progressively replaced by dynamic systems that offer new technical advantages and economic benefits. By Rudolf Müller, Dipl.-Ing., Product Manager, PFC Power Capacitors, EPCOS. Conventional power factor correction systems consist of a power factor [...]

IGCTs with outstanding current handling capability To improve performance, reduce the size and cost of power electronic systems and allow more flexibility in designing power electronic applications, the development trend in high power semiconductors continues to be one of increasing current and voltage capabilities. In this article, the high Safe Operating Area [...]

Control loop is implemented in an algorithm Power converters have traditionally been designed around an analogue pulse width modulation (PWM) controller. Two types of control schemes for this architecture have emerged: voltage-mode control, in which the duty cycle is directly adjusted by the error on the output voltage, and current-mode control, in [...]

Transfer-molded package with DBC substrate Intelligent power modules with transfer-molded package are a current trend in low power motor drives both in consumer appliances and general industrial applications. Fairchild SPM(Smart Power Module) covering power range of 0.05 ~ 7kW has established its dominant position thanks to its compactness, functionality, reliability and cost-effective [...]

Maximizing battery life in portable consumer products Ultra-thin hard-disk drive Motor Controller integrates all necessary power FETs and is optimized for 1.8 inch and sub-1.8 inch consumer equipment drives By Steffen Grahlmann, STMicroelectronics The Consumer Electronics (CE) Market in general and especially the segments that have a need for storing big [...]